Desiccated
by Von
Summary: The worst thing you can do in Dunwall, is magic. Harry does it anyway. A fragmented MoD one-shot that might one day grow up to be a proper story.


**Fair Warning**: This is more of a one-shot story told in snapshots than anything else.

I was reminded of it gathering dust in my junk draw and since the HP/Dishonored section of ff.n is EMPTY, I'm posting this to fill the void. I do hope to have the time to flesh it out into a proper story one day but _until_ that day, please feel free to spin it off or whatever.

"_He once saved the world. He regrets it." ~ _The Heart

**Desiccated**

The rats got into _everything_.

That was the first - and most important - lesson that Dunwall had to teach him.

Just because packs roamed the streets didn't mean that second-floor rooms were safe. He was sure it didn't help that _feeding _the rats were corpses.

_Everywhere_.

The stench of death - of plague - cloaked the city and nowhere Harry had managed to go was clear of it.

_D_

He had to be careful. So very, very careful.

This place, rotting and damp and sprawling with the strength of an old lion… it was intolerant of magic in a way not even his own world's history could match. Forget witch burnings - what these people did to their _own_ spiritual leaders was horrific, let alone what they did to anyone or any_thing_ even remotely suspected of stepping outside the all-powerful Abbey of the Everyman line. Or worse - if you dabbled in the arcane.

If he were _smart_, he'd just leave it alone. Forget he was ever a wizard. Be invisible. He didn't even really _need_ magic to steal food or shelter, what with all the dead people leaving their homes and food stores open to anyone willing to break in.

But, well, as Hermione would say? He was an idiot.

Also, he kind of had a saving-people thing.

So, when his aimless wanderings caused him to find a girl - barely older than him but with lines of stress and a pallor to match - rummaging through rubbish bins because she couldn't make rent what with the plague killing her employers… well. He didn't even pause to think.

He took her to an abandoned home on the third floor of a building that was near enough to the remaining survivors in the district so as to be somewhat safe, but not so near so as her illegal occupancy would be noticed. She went with him willingly enough, almost grateful for the chance to do what she thought he wanted, and sell herself.

Only guards had the coin for _that _around here, and they didn't waste it on plague-ridden corpses waiting to happen.

He thought she would have maybe preferred it if he _had_ been looking for a whore. She watched with huge frightened eyes as he put his magic to work repairing, shoring and cleaning. He laid down basic runic wards against the ever-present rats, lay air purification runes along the window edges and water condensation/purification runes within deep basins. He worked from a tattered copy of 'Pocket Runes for the Busy Wizard' and showed her how they were powered - not from eldritch magic from beyond the natural world but simple transference of energy. He gave her a painstakingly-carved brazier and tried to explain that so long as the coals within were hot, the energy they gave off would power the runes protecting her. All she had to do was replace the coals when they grew cold, about twice a week or so, and she need never fear the plague or dying of cold, thirst or exposure.

She'd been frightened, but too desperate to turn him down. She was _more_ frightened of being found herself and accused of witchcraft. She wavered between not committing the sin of _asking _him for magical protection and begging reassurance. He wished he could cast some form of 'notice not' on the home, but it wasn't contained within his cheap little book and his wand was… unsafe. Erratic. Contrary in the worst of ways. He couldn't even offer her a pendant of protection, as an unconnected object couldn't be charged by the brazier. All he could do was caution her to be careful, to keep her safe house a secret and to leave it should she ever feel at risk.

She'd been frightened, but grateful too. She asked him:

_"Are you the Outsider?"_

He didn't know what to say, except:

_"I'm nobody."_

He left her, then. Knew from bitter experience that he drew attention, that his presence near hers would only cause trouble.

It didn't matter, in the end. Less than a month later, she was bitten by a rat on the street. She fell sick with the plague and died. He found her diary - full of pleas for him to return, bitterness for his betrayal and slow, lonely death - near her untouched, decomposing corpse, three months too late.

And he vowed - again - not to help the next one. To turn a blind eye to the suffering of people who had no relief and no hope. To deny the very core of his being.

He made it a whole thirteen days, this time, before he broke his vow.

_D_

The Fugue Feast was a nightmare and a dream come true. It averaged a day in length, the 'missing' day according to the inexact calender of 365 days he was used to. Here, they didn't have with such imprecision.

The Fugue Feast was a local custom. No, it was more than that… not just a practice but a _belief_, a part of life held so sacrosanct and true that no matter what happened during it, it never bled over into the rest of the year.

It was like a release valve for people's insanity. It was a gift that allowed a strict, violent order to rule without opposition. It was like giving people bits of Heaven so they wouldn't mind living in Hell.

It was also the only day that he could wield his magic openly. He wore a mask - a simple black strip of cotton with green-black feathers - and kept his hood up as he did what he didn't dare at any other time.

He purified a well of poisoned water, carving runes deep down to protect it from further attempts by maddened suicidal citizens or plague victims trying to drown - powered the runes through the energy needed to turn the winch and lower or raise the bucket within.

He made life flourish in massive patches of deadened cityscape, forcing nature to re-take the empty buildings of stone and wood.

He eradicated every rat he came across, cleaned filthy sections of the city, spurred fallen and forgotten seeds to break open the street with stalks of wheat and trees heavy with fruit.

Some people screamed and ran from him. Others watched in awe. Still more shrieked with laughter and danced for him, applauding and casting their own magic to hurt and help alike.

"_Outsider!" _Some called him, accused him, asked of him. _"Pretender!" _Others mocked, snarled, cheered.

"_Childling." _An old woman once crooned. _"Lost one. This age doesn't want you - go back to your own!"_

"_I'm trying." _He told her, but she just laughed at him and blinked away before he could ask for her help.

When his magic grew weary, he changed his black mask for a white one and walked up to the richer part of the city. Whereas the streets of the poorer districts ran full with men fucking each other's wives and children, up here they were almost empty. The insanity of the Feast of Fugue confined itself indoors, a desire for privacy which convinced him that everything that 'didn't happen' during this time was still remembered. Maybe, like in the old days of his own home country, the poorer you were the more you believed the lies told by your superiors. Or maybe it was just that the richer you were, the better you could afford discreet revenge after the Feast of Fugue was over.

Those few staggering from one depraved entertainment to another often tried to waylay him. Sometimes with words, mostly with violence. If he had the time or patience, he'd inflict them with ugly, simple curses. To see only the evil inside people. To hear everything five times louder than it was. To be impotent. He carved the runes into their faces and charged them with the power of their own heartbeats, locking the curse in for as long as they lived - proof that actions during the Feast of Fugue had consequences.

If he was in a hurry, however, he just let them touch his skin and moved on before their boiling blood could burst their bodies and spray him with their filth.

He didn't feel guilty. He never did, during the Feast of Fugue. Not because he thought his actions were hidden, didn't exist, weren't illegal, no… he didn't feel guilty because everyone who touched him during this month did so with evil in their hearts and minds - and he'd long since accustomed himself to murdering evil-doers.

He kept walking, past Tall Boys jousting before a crowd of roaring guards, straight through the gates of the palace and into the heart of the Empire.

At any time, the Overseers could declare the Feast over and his presence would be trespass worthy of treason. Until that time, however, he had free reign.

Once, when looking for the library, he witnessed a man stand fast before an ornate door and slaughter wave after wave of uniformed men. Some Overseers, some guards, some servants. Behind him, through the glazed window built into the door, he could see the shape of a woman wrapped around something smaller. A child?

He thought about lending his aid to the man who seemed to be protecting them, but none seemed to be needed. The killer finished off the last of his attackers and sent him a hard look, one hand dropping to his holstered gun.

He kept walking.

_D_

"Sir. May I speak with you?"

He glanced behind him. It was miserable, misting weather and nobody was out in it if they could help it.

Nobody but him and, apparently, a man with a mask fetish.

He nodded and turned back. The man behind him approached slowly but sat beside him without apparent concern for the damp.

"I hear you know how to cure the plague."

He almost snorted, his lips curling up the faintest amount.

"You hear, do you?" He asked laconically. "From whom?"

There was a long, cautious pause.

"From the Outsider."

Harry looked at him sharply. Again with the mention of a man who somehow knows about him - knows but never shows or speaks or helps or hinders.

He glanced down, then held out his left hand to shake. The man hesitated again - longer this time - before offering his own. Harry took his hand firmly and turned it without delay, showing the black mark burned into the back of the man's hand.

"So it _is_ you." He murmured, releasing the hand and tucking his own away in his pockets. "Corvo."

The man tensed even more, barely stalling himself from reaching for a weapon. Harry just ignored him, stared out over the city and waited for the man - murder, failed protector, vigilante - to make the next move.

These days, Harry was big on allowing others to set the tone for his own behaviour. He gave out what he was given - often thrice-fold.

Corvo didn't disappoint. Despite his tension, he sighed and visibly dialled back his own reaction.

"_He_ told you?" He asked. Harry shrugged and left it at that.

"_Do_ you know?" Corvo tried again, sensing Harry's disinclination to discuss the Outsider. Harry dropped his eyes to his hands, buried though they were in his hoodie pockets. The hoodie was coming apart from years of wear. Years that didn't reflect on his face, his stature.

"I have an idea." He allowed. Which was true. In his search for a path home, he'd uncovered all manner of things, including the origin of the plague.

The _true _origin.

And as with any disease, knowing the cause was half the battle to finding the cure.

"Will you share it with me?" Corvo asked carefully, obviously feeling out his questions. Did he sense, this man blessed with another's magic, that the wrong approach would ruin his chances? Did he believe Harry might try to kill him, should he step wrong? Or was this simply his nature?

"You should already know part of it." Harry states calmly. "What is the link between the plague that exists, the plague you can summon and the elixir that enables and shields them both?"

Silence.

Harry sighed, surprised to find himself disappointed, and stood.

"When you know the first half of the solution," he offered "You may ask me for the second."

He walked away. Despite his palpable dissatisfaction, Corvo let him.

_D_

"Once upon a time," Harry began "in an Age before this one, there lived a world which was dominated by two people. What they called themselves doesn't matter in this day and Age, so lets call them The Overseers and The Outsiders."

Emily wriggled with delight at the risque and dramatic beginning - as any child would when being spoken to of something that was _not _to be spoken of.

"These people quarrelled throughout history, as people do. In the beginning, The Outsiders - with their esoteric and arcane abilities - were stronger and better than The Overseers. They ruled, or tormented, or protected at the whim of the individual. Some laws were made and most were enforced, but always there lingered magic in the subtext of the world.

Then, as time passed, The Overseers grew stronger. Some of it was their own development, some of it was guided by The Outsiders, but in the end they grew strong enough to challenge. To fight back. To attack.

Atrocities were committed by both sides until eventually The Outsiders decided to live 'outside' the realm of The Overseers. Neighbours in reality but unable to be perceived by any but themselves, they existed in relative peace for thousands of years. Occasionally there were scuffles - internal wars bled from one side to the other - but for the most part they no longer fought each other.

Until, one day, the old wars were forgotten. The reasons for living apart - forgotten. The Overseers and their great technological advances were the equal - or superior - of The Outsiders and it was considered proper to live together once more.

Within a decade, they warred again - greater than any war before. The Outsiders fought with an individual's strength - for each man or woman had a varied set of skills and abilities. They could do what The Overseers couldn't. But The Overseers had machines of war far greater in destructive power than any one Outsider and they used them liberally.

I don't who was winning, or how it happened, but there came a battle where an Overseer weapon of mass destruction - beyond anything you can imagine - was contaminated with an Outsider's magic. Perhaps it was a struggle gone wrong. Perhaps it was an attempt to force an end to the war. I don't know. All I do know is that the resulting explosion fractured the world.

The land that once was - birth place of Outsiders and Overseers both - was broken into four pieces. All that lived and most that had been built was destroyed in a single flash of power. The rest of the world was dropped into ever-lasting winter - winter charged with Outsider magic. The Overseer's weapon destroyed and sickened. The Outsider's magic renewed and remade.

Somehow, both survived. The Overseers clung to the rocks of what was once a great, unified nation. The Outsiders eked out a living in the wasteland that was the continent. Both died off, were forgotten, were remade.

In the end, the war was won by a side which had no idea there had ever _been_ a war. They won by virtue of outlasting their enemies. The magic within the weapon had not touched the Overseers, you see, but affected the Outsiders only. And so the Outsiders were remade along with the world, leaving only the Overseers behind.

Before they faded entirely, though, the Outsiders pooled their strength and formed great works of magic as their legacy. As their vengeance for defeat."

Harry looked up, locking eyes with the masked man who had stepped silently inside.

"One of them has found its way here." He continued calmly to an oblivious heir to the throne. "And carries out its purpose."

"What purpose?" Emily demanded, enthralled by the story. Harry smiled at her, coldly kind.

"The eradication of the Overseers, of course. All of them." His eyes flicked up to Corvo.

"It cannot be cured - only broken."

The man took a heavy step forward, snatching Emily's attention, though the man himself kept his eyes on Harry who simply faded from sight and continued to watch. A smile tugged his lips at the obviously genuine affection between both the man and child. It was nice, to see someone without ulterior motives when a child - and power - was in play.

He'd almost stopped believing that such people existed.

_D_

It was the silence that got him.

He was wandering the streets of Dunwall's infested Distillery District, half-lost as usual, when he saw him.

The boy was tiny, partly from youth and partly from starvation. He sat with his back to a grime-covered wall, knees to his chest, arms tucked in-between for warmth and stared out at the world with the empty eyes of a child who has cried too long unanswered. Of a small life knowingly waiting to be snuffed out.

He was a weeper. Or, almost. Harry could see movement on his skin from where he stood, the mites and fleas and maggots that rushed to infest the open wounds the plague wrought on its victims.

He walked right past the boy. The boy saw him and said nothing. Expected nothing, except to be ignored as so many others had obviously ignored him.

Maybe he hoped to be found by the watch. Put out of his misery.

_Merlin_, could kids that young even conceive of such a thing?

Five steps past, he stopped. Sighed. Turned around.

The boy wasn't even looking at him, so utterly lacking in hope that his stalled movement didn't even register. Harry chewed his cheek in frustration but already knew what he was going to do.

With a slight curse he retraced his steps and approached the boy, casting a wary eye for anyone looking to jump a Good Samaritan. Or, failing that, witnesses.

There seemed to be none of either, so as he crouched down in front of the kid he tugged off his cloak. It was the work of a few moments to bundle the boy up thoroughly - nobody liked fleas, ticks, mites and maggots getting into their clothes - before he lifted him into his arms and continued walking down the street, this time with a purpose.

The boy said nothing. After a block, he gingerly rested his clothed head against Harry's shoulder, though whether it was for comfort or warmth...

Half an hour later they were back in one of his camps. This one was deep in the most derelict part of the district and thus the one he came home to most often. A half-built fifth storey room towered over all the three-storey buildings around it and the view it offered had been worth the effort of finding and securing enough materials for makeshift walls. This room was charmed more heavily than any other, with one-way see-through walls and a self-filling/cleaning/heating bath on top of the usual bevy of runes that kept all manner of unpleasantness out. The first thing he did once he got home, after dropping the boy into a corner by the door, was stoke the fire and remove some coals to power up all the wards he had.

What he would be doing tonight was amongst the worst of this world's witchcraft.

The boy seemed content to sit where he was placed, limp like a discarded doll, face still bleak and blank despite the pain he had to be in. His eyes were aimed in Harry's general direction, though they didn't seem even the slightest more emotive than they had in the street.

Fetching a plump wineskin, Harry added alcohol to the steaming bathwater as he deliberately ran his other hand down a jagged edge of metal protruding from his wall. He let a good amount of blood fall into the bath as well, then tilted his hand and the skin to store more in the wine.

The plague was, after all, of magical construction. The Wizard's last great weapon against the Muggles, using their own 'bye-oh-low-gee' against them. How smug the Wizards had been. Maybe the infestation of Dunwall was them finally getting the last laugh.

Then again, by the time the plague had found its way to the last free islands, all the wizards were so long gone they may as well have never even _existed._ Harry himself was the last magical being left in the world.

Well, excluding the Whales. Which, was _exactly_ why the elixir these Muggles had developed worked as well as it did. The active ingredient - treated whale blood - held a slowly decaying amount of magic within it that temporarily inoculated the consumer against the plague. Theoretically, enough doses could ensure everyone survived long enough for the plague itself to die out. Due to either supply issues, logistics or something more sinister, however, doses were hard to come by. The street gangs peddled extremely watered-down versions that raised your chances of survival slightly, but it was essentially useless for anyone directly exposed an hour or so after consumption.

Harry knew this because, over the past several months, he had witnessed a _lot_ of people _die _from it.

Whales, though. _They_ were powerful enough that a drop of living blood (taken and given whilst the animal still lived) would be enough to completely cure a dozen people - assuming the magic didn't just burn them from the inside out, of course. Whales, being all that was left of a once massive and diversified world of magic, were much more potent pound-for-pound than his own wizardly self.

But, _his_ living blood? Given willingly? Imbibed and washed in? Would surely be more than enough to save this one tiny child.

The bath finished filling and Harry quickly washed his hand before bandaging it, then carried the wineskin over to the boy.

"Drink." He ordered quietly. The boy didn't move, but when Harry held it to his lips, he opened his mouth and obeyed. He showed no reaction to the taste. Harry kept close watch until he could just see the faintest of sparks - like static shocks - in the open wounds on the boy's face, before pulling the skin away and picking the boy up again.

"I'm going to clean your wounds out." He explained simply. "It will hurt, but once we're finished you'll feel much better. I promise."

The boy didn't react, not even when Harry set him down again and gingerly pulled off first his cloak and then the boy's clothes. Naked, streaked with blood and feces, pus and muck, he looked dead already.

Harry dropped him unceremoniously into the tub, the shock of hot water on open wounds finally startling a reaction. The kid screamed, a strangled, raw sound that was choked back seconds later. That was more than neglect - that was a trained behaviour. Harry's lips thinned, but he ignored it for now as he briskly rubbed the boy all over, forcing the hot, blood-and-alcohol tainted water to dislodge and get into every scrap of every infected sore. Maggots floated, wriggling, to the surface. Two ticks stayed stubbornly stuck until he fed a touch of magic through his fingertips, frying them much like a match would. Mites, fleas, swollen scabs and shit and dirt all came off in clouds of filth that turned the bathwater into a cesspool. Finally, when he'd rubbed away the worst of it and the boy was silently sobbing into his upper arm, he lifted him out and used his elbow to activate the cleansing rune. The boy's sobs softened a bit as he watched the bath seemingly empty itself without bring tipped over, with not the slightest bit of contamination left to cling to the sides. He stopped crying completely when, with another brush, the bath re-filled itself.

Harry glanced over at the coals powering this little set of magic, but they still burned orange.

Then he set the boy back into the water, where he flinched but remained silent. This time, though, he stared up at Harry with wide eyes that almost looked alive.

"Almost done." Harry murmured, knowing the plague itself - which caused the sickness and sores inside and out - would already be almost destroyed by the blood within the wine he'd had the boy drink. There was no doubt the boy felt better on the _inside, _but he wasn't about to ask until all the unpleasant outside stuff had been taken care of.

A short stretch and he had his scavenged medical kit to hand, tweezers out and ready. Without explaining himself, he carefully studied each and every wound he found - from gaping stretches over the boy's back to underneath his hair to the crevices between toes and buttocks - and pulled out any lingering infestation or undesirable material. The boy squirmed once or twice, more from discomfort or pain than anything else.

That done, he lifted the boy up and into a towel, set him on the floor well away from his clothes (he'd burn them the second he had a free moment, although hopefully his wards would have encouraged anything remaining in there to have left the premises) and carefully patted him dry. His medical kit had everything a magical thief could want or carry. The Port was full of scavengers, but it was _more_ full of corpses and locked or barred doors. Fishing out what seemed to be the closest thing to an antiseptic these modern Muggles had, he gently spread it over the boy's wounds and wrapped them, one by one, until he had a little mummy sitting pliantly before him. After a moment's thought he fetched one of his own shirts (tossing the boy's old clothing into the fire and quickly checking himself for bugs as he went) and slipped it onto the boy's body. It hung off him like Dudley's old clothes used to hang off _him_, but it would suit as a nightshirt.

Still silent, the boy placidly allowed himself to be carried to the single bed - made up with the softest, warmest sheets and blankets he could steal from the richer areas of the city - and tucked in. Harry made sure he had a pillow and blanket of his own and then lay down next to him. The magic in the blood he'd given the boy was still pulling from his own supply and he felt exhausted.

He was right on the edge of sleep when he felt the barest touch of a tiny boy, wriggling under his arm to snuggle into his chest.

He slept better that night than any of the hundred thousand before it.

**Desiccated**

Complete, for now.


End file.
